The home-wireless-products market is emerging ahead of widespread adoption in large organizations, an unusual development. Despite success in some markets, wireless infrastructure vendors still struggle to deliver secure and manageable enterprise products. Their customers are trying to figure out how to respond to internal demand stimulated by home users -- and they worry that rogue access points will start popping up at the departmental level, much as PCs did 20 years ago. At the same time, vendors and customers are coming to grips with the prospect that today's technology may become obsolete as products built around the new 54-Mbps 802.11a standard begin surfacing this year.
There's not much the established vendors can do to delay 11a adoption or to artificially inflate prices for this "premium technology." Leading chip supplier Atheros has no ties to the 11b legacy, so that company is sailing full speed ahead. And don't be surprised when wireless vendors that missed the 11b wave push 11a hard as a differentiator in a market where Cisco and Agere/Lucent dominate.
Established vendors, which are feeling internal financial pressures, aren't sure how to deal with 11a. They're preoccupied with solving the deficiencies of 11b, including security, roaming, QoS and interference from other wireless devices. Granted, the solutions to some of these problems will translate to 11a, but getting a little more life out of existing technology has significant appeal. Many are privately hoping that a new backward-compatible 22-Mbps, 2.4-GHz physical standard will dampen enthusiasm for 11a.
What will 2002 bring? First to arrive -- maybe even before the ball falls in Times Square -- will be standards-based enhancements that provide authentication and session-based encryption. Eventually you'll run a manageable and secure wireless LAN without being locked into a proprietary solution.
Not quite so glamorous is a set of standards for inter-access-point communication that will enhance roaming in multivendor environments. Enterprise customers will likely look to a single vendor for infrastructure, so the benefits here aren't as important.
Next you'll see 802.11 QoS standards. This will be a shot in the arm for champions of wireless convergence, and the prospects for voice, video and data services coming together over a wireless LAN will improve dramatically. The bad news is that it will lead many to the same conclusion 11b antagonists have been arguing from the beginning: A shared 11-Mbps data rate is inadequate.
While there are technical solutions to these issues, interference is another story. Microwave ovens remain a problem, and 2.4-GHz cordless phones are an even bigger concern. Frequency agility solutions, which let access points find a clean channel at start-up, are of limited value until they can dynamically adapt as conditions change. If there's any good news, it's Bluetooth's continuing failure. Co-existence between Bluetooth and 802.11b will be more détente than peace. 11a champions should pull for Bluetooth because it would significantly enhance the appeal of 5-GHz products.
But 5 GHz is no panacea. True, the spectrum isn't as crowded, there's more of it to work with, and the modulation schemes are better. But the laws of physics won't be suspended anytime soon, which means 11a products won't have the range of 11b. And don't be duped by dual-radio access points that promise easy migration from 11b to 11a. Moving to 11a will require significant redesign, so prepare for some challenges.
Send your comments on this column to Dave Molta at dmolta@nwc.com.
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